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Introduction to the Aga Khan Trust
for Culture
The purpose of the
Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) is the improvement of
built environments in societies where Muslims have a significant
presence.
 Objectives
Buildings and public
spaces are physical manifestations of culture in societies,
past, and present. They represent human endeavours that
can enhance the quality of life, foster self-understanding
and community values, and expand opportunities for economic
and social development into the future. To
underwrite the vitality and integrity of built environments
in the Muslim world, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture has
developed programmes that support:
- The pursuit of
excellence in contemporary architecture and related fields;
- The conservation
and creative re-use of historic buildings and public spaces
which facilitate social, economic, and cultural development;
- The strengthening
of education for architectural practice, planning, and
conservation; and
- The international
exchange of ideas to enhance understanding of the intimate
connection between culture and built environments in the
history and culture of Islamic civilisations and in contemporary
Muslim societies.
History
The Aga Khan Trust
for Culture was founded in 1988 and is registered in Geneva,
Switzerland, as a private, non-denominational,
philanthropic foundation. It is an integral part of the
Aga Khan Development
Network (AKDN), a family of institutions created by His
Highness The Aga Khan, with distinct yet complementary mandates
to improve the welfare and prospects of people in countries
in the developing world, particularly in Asia and Africa.
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Baltit
Fort, Northern Pakistan, restored by the Trust's Historic
Cities Programme and opened to the public in late
1996. Click on photo to enlarge.
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Though their spheres
of activity and expertise differ—ranging from social
development, to economic development, to culture—AKDN
institutions share at least three principles that guide
their work. The first is a dedication to self-sustaining
development that can contribute to long-term economic advancement
and social harmony. The second is a commitment to the vigorous
participation of local communities in all development efforts.
Finally, all Network institutions seek shared responsibility
for positive change. They actively work to facilitate collaborative
ventures, seeking potential partners—from universities
and governments, to foundations and international development
agencies, to individual and corporate donors or investors—on
the basis of shared objectives and the complementarity of
resources.
Current Programmes
In addition to the
Aga Khan Award for Architecture, The Trust conducts two
other major programmes: the Historic Cities Support Programme,
and the Education and Culture Programme. All three address
the Trust's essential purpose, but do so in ways that are
distinct, have their own geographical coverages, and have
different, though overlapping, target audiences. All make
use of workshops, seminars, publications, and the media
to stimulate thinking and disseminate outcomes, although
the form as well as the content varies according to the
needs of each programme.
Architecture Programmes
A focus on the practice
of architecture in the Muslim world for nearly twenty years
has produced a reservoir of data, information, expertise,
and experience that may be unique. It has grown primarily
because of two initiatives, each the first of its kind,
and both now responsibilities of the Trust for Culture.
They are the Aga Khan Award for
Architecture, established in 1977, the world's largest
prize for architecture, and the Aga
Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a specialised
programme of professional and graduate studies and research
established in 1979. Their activities have generated knowledge
about contemporary and historic buildings, professional
education, the cultural and economic dimensions of built
environments, and a network of architectural professionals,
scholars, and administrators specialising in the Muslim
world.
This wealth of information documents the pluralism and diversity
of Muslim societies and of their current circumstances.
It also allows for the identification of critical challenges
they share in the present period of rapid economic and cultural
change. Among the more prominent are the needs to:
- Meet fundamental
aspirations for practical and meaningful architecture.
The quantity, distribution, and quality of the existing
stock of buildings falls short of needs and desirable
professional standards. Historic buildings and public
spaces of practical and cultural importance are especially
vulnerable to destruction from pressures on urban areas;
- Increase local
and national capacity to improve building conditions.
Training and institutional mechanisms for the effective
use of manpower and materials at the community level need
to be improved. This is especially urgent in rural areas,
where most people in developing countries still live,
and in the core areas of historic cities, which are generally
inhabited by poorer and less influential segments of societies;
- Promote the education,
training and retraining of architects, planners, and conservators
to support long-term maintenance of built environments.
Professional practices responsive to the economic, social,
and cultural issues of Muslim communities are essential
to the sustained vitality of built environments; and
- Engage the creative
thought and practice of the world architectural community
and of key opinion and decision makers. This calls for
concerted investigation, problem solving, dialogue, and
the free and open exchange of ideas to understand and
address the distinctive conditions, opportunities, and
values in the diverse societies in the Muslim world more
effectively.
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Stone
Town Cultural Centre, Zanzibar, restored by the Trust's
Historic Cities Programme and inaugurated in early
1997. Click on
photo to enlarge..
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The Historic Cities Support Programme
This programme, formalised
in 1992, undertakes specific, direct interventions focused
on physical, social, and economic revitalisation of historic
sites in the Muslim world. The challenge taken up by the
Historic Cities Support Programme (HCSP) is to demonstrate
that cultural concerns and socio-economic needs can be mutually
supportive. Accordingly, the programme tests new strategies
which combine state-of-the-art restoration, conservation,
and urban development principles with community based institutions
and fresh entrepreneurial initiatives designed to make local
resources self-sustaining for the future.
Typically, HCSP identifies, plans, and executes projects.
Where necessary, it establishes local service companies
as partners in implementation and prepares them for autonomous
operation as self-sustaining community organisations. Operating
flexibly, however, HCSP fits its role to the needs of each
project and community, and works in any combination of the
following capacities:
Project identification and planning assistance to government
and local bodies that have recognised conservation potentials.
HCSP provides technical expertise, defines opportunities
and approaches, prepares feasibility studies, and shapes
proposals for submission to local investors or international
agencies, including the Trust itself.
Planning for conservation and appropriate redevelopment.
HCSP undertakes urban conservation and development projects
which may include a cluster of buildings, public spaces
between and around buildings, a district, or a complete
plan for a historic town. These efforts can move from study
and planning through funding and implementation with the
help of local institutions, governments, and other funding
partners. All such projects aim at restoring and maintaining
the socio-economic and cultural fabric of a designated area.
Undertaking selected conservation and re-use projects. HCSP
periodically engages in restoring specific historic sites
and buildings. These may be elements of urban landscape
or single structures, for which appropriate new functions
are developed to meet the social and economic needs of the
respective communities.
Cultural initiatives are planned in most sites to support
the long-term viability of conservation projects through
the re-animation of historic structures in a context of
ongoing social and economic change, rather than as an isolated
process. All enabling development factors - community support,
innovative institutional structures, and commercial potential
- are harnessed, whenever possible, to make conservation
sustainable.
To date, the Trust has undertaken restoration, urban conservation,
and development projects in Granada, Baltit-Karimabad, Zanzibar,
Cairo, and Samarkand. Restoration of the Zafra House in
Granada was completed in 1991. In 1996, HCSP completed the
conservation of the Baltit Fort and the stabilisation of
the historic core of the village of Karimabad in the Hunza
Valley. The restoration of the Old Dispensary in Zanzibar
as the new Stone Town Cultural Centre was completed in early
1997. Special documentation kits on these projects and a
monograph on the planning and conservation of the Zanzibar
Stone Town have been published.
Education and Culture Programme
This programme has
three interrelated goals: improving the training of architectural
professionals for work in the Muslim world; increasing cross-cultural
understanding of Islamic architecture and the intimate connection
between architecture and culture in Islamic civilisations;
and creating greater awareness and appreciation of the diversity
and pluralism of Muslim cultures—within the Muslim
world itself as well as in the West. In contrast to the
other two programmes of the Trust, the Education and Culture
Programme is primarily focused on academics and academic
institutions. Its resources are the Trust's archive, the
Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture's research, resources,
publications, faculty, and students, and the Trust's contacts
with architectural educators and scholars in related fields
around the world.
The principal resource for all the Trust's initiatives in
Education and Culture is its archive. This unique collection
contains more than 200,000 images and drawings, mainly representing
over 2,000 projects nominated for the Aga Khan Award for
Architecture and supplemented by extensive documentation,
research reports, and publications developed through the
Award process. Professional photographers have been commissioned
to survey 172 of these projects, accompanied by architectural
experts who compile technical reviews. In addition, the
work of the Historic Cities Support Programme is well represented
and a significant general collection on contemporary architecture
in the Muslim world has developed. The Trust holds copyright
on most of this material. It also houses a small, specialised
textual library as well as special collections, including
the archives of architect and urban planner, Michel Ecochard,
and a complete copy of the archive of architect, Hassan
Fathy. Access to the Trust's archive and library is welcome
by appointment.
The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA) has
the status of being both a Trust grantee and a major resource
for its work in Education and Culture. An endowed centre
of excellence in the history, theory, and practice of Islamic
architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, AKPIA's mandate is to educate architects,
planners, teachers, and researchers who can contribute directly
to meeting the building and design needs of Muslim communities
today. AKPIA teaching and scholarship also serves to increase
sympathetic cross-cultural interest in Islamic arts and
culture. Trust endowments have supported the operation of
Harvard's textual and visual collections on the history
of Islamic art and architecture, and have enabled the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology to develop an outstanding visual
and reference collection on the architecture of the 20th
century Muslim world. The Trust has also underwritten the
publication of Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Culture
of the Islamic World, produced since 1983 through AKPIA's
office at Harvard University.
A third resource is the Programme's knowledge and contacts
in the field of architectural education. More than 100 AKPIA
alumni/alumnae now hold positions as educators, researchers,
practitioners, and managers of cultural institutions throughout
the world. In a related effort, the Trust sponsored Dawood
College, Karachi, to survey 100 architecture schools in
30 Muslim societies to identify the problems of greatest
priority they face in their training programmes.
At present the pre-eminent concern for the Education and
Culture Programme is the development of mechanisms that
will effectively open the contents of the Trust's archive
to students and faculty (and others) around the world by
remote access. An electronic catalogue is available on the
Trust's section of the AKDN Website. The next step is to
make the viewing of images and drawings possible from remote
sites, and the ordering of high-quality reproductions of
specific items feasible. A related set of activities is
designed to draw on the resources of the archive and AKPIA
to develop curricular and other materials that can help
strengthen the training of architectural professionals in
the Muslim world. Here too, a combination of electronic
communications and more conventional means of conveying
information to facilitate the exchange of resource materials,
research in progress and experimental teaching materials
will be employed.
The Trust is also involved in a highly innovative effort
to stimulate the re-examination of humanistic traditions
in the newly independent states of Central Asia. The Aga
Khan Humanities Project for Central Asia aims to develop
a core, introductory humanities curriculum for undergraduate
students in local universities. The project is being carried
out by a group leading humanists in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan,
draws on cultural traditions of the region and the many
world civilisations which have influenced them over time.
It is organised around a series of themes, presently including
human diversity and human ideals, individuality and responsibility
to society and the environment; understanding cultural creativity
and decline; culture, innovation and applied reason; art
and the human condition; and the relationship between oral
and written traditions.
Seminars and Conferences
Finally, the Education and Culture programme will continue
to develop and support seminars and conferences on a selected
basis. Topics, in order of priority, currently include:
- Issues confronting
the education of architectural professionals in the Muslim
world;
- Broadening the
understanding of the richness and pluralism of cultures
in Islamic societies; and
- The examination
of neglected or insufficiently studied architectural problems
of particular importance in the Muslim world.
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